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Post by jonathan on May 27, 2010 22:03:22 GMT
Well advance ticketes have sold out, not sure why yours were £15, on the door they're only £10. I guess I shall come along! I'll get there for noon too, though will text/call closer to the time so we can coordinate.
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Post by Emily on May 28, 2010 7:52:45 GMT
wait no they were £13... I guess they're cheaper on the day because there's less available and you have to queue?
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Post by jonathan on Jun 3, 2010 19:55:43 GMT
So recently I finally got round to one of the many mangas I've had sitting on my hard-drive waiting to be read (as opposed to ones I buy, which is "anything I can buy" since I hate reading scans), and it was a doujinshi titled Masturbation Master Kurosawa (all sources refer to it as "Onani Master Kurosawa", but I have a bug in my ass about leaving in Japanese words so I won't do that). When I first saw people talking about this, I naturally made assumptions based on the title and the pages posted. What I was expecting initially: Wank jokes, Death Note parody (it was sometimes referred to as "Fap Note", due to some obvious references early on, as seen above, and the fact that the protagonist looks and even acts a fair bit like Light). However, as people talked about it a bit more (especially as translations got closer to the end of its four-volume run) I noticed readers saying that it was actually a coming-of-age story. To give the now overdue blurb, it centres on Kakeru Kurosawa, a solitary middle-school boy who, every day after school, masturbates in a seldom-used girl's toilet on the third floor, fueling this by fantasising about girls in his class. However, as things change, the story comes to focus on bullying, growing up, and finding oneself. img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/crohbar/Onani Master Kurosawa/th_18.png[/img][/url] My expectations at this point: A coming-of-age story, that somehow starts with a loner fapping in a girl's toilet. I filed it away in the "To read" section of my mind, eventually downloaded it, and, just yesterday, finally got round to reading it. What I got:img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/crohbar/Onani Master Kurosawa/th_20.jpg[/img][/url] img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/crohbar/Onani Master Kurosawa/th_29-1.jpg[/img][/url] img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/crohbar/Onani Master Kurosawa/th_42.jpg[/img][/url] One of the most honest, genuine, true-to-life, and well-written coming-of-age stories I've read in the medium. I'm trying not to spoil too much, since it's honestly too good a story to spoil, but, even with my mended expectations, it still surprised me constantly. The story kept going in directions I didn't expect at all, but it was never the Code Geass style "asspull plot-twist for sheer what-the-fuck value", everything felt natural and carefully considered. Characters constantly defied stereotypes and clichés, and developed in completely believable ways. The artwork may look primitive but the writing and storytelling is brilliant, clearly produced by somebody with a real story to tell. Ultimately, it turned out to have more in common with Catcher in the Rye than Death Note (though it's been years and years since I actually read that so I don't know how precise this comparison is). I find it marred slightly by the "bonus" chapter, not because it's bad or irrelevant, but because I think the content would maybe have been better placed amongst the normal chapters, since the ending without it has considerably more impact. However, this is a minor quibble. While I never really experienced true bullying at school, I found myself able to relate very well to some of the themes developed later in the story, that the awful things people may do or say as children can be either crucial to one's development, or end up being utterly meaningless. Sometimes they can even seem to be both. All the events are so well-observed, though, that I'm sure almost anybody could find something specific they can relate to, and it's such a well-constructed story I'd recommend it to anybody regardless. It's only four volumes so you've got no excuse! Go read it!
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Post by Emily on Jun 4, 2010 8:24:01 GMT
Really...? REALLY?
having trouble taking the title seriously. Maybe the makers should have thought more carefully about that before making a well thought out manga...
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Post by Ally on Jun 4, 2010 13:46:39 GMT
The title does make him sound like a superhero with a rather unfortunate power. Which in turn reminds me of this:
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Post by jonathan on Jun 4, 2010 14:56:39 GMT
Have I ever lied to you? The title actually ends up being completely appropriate and quite significant, and not in whatever way you might expect! Read it and you'll find out. Between this and Alien Nine I have well and truly learned not to judge a book by its cover.
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Post by jonathan on Jun 5, 2010 17:16:23 GMT
OH GOD I just read the Alien Nine manga and it's even more fucked up than the anime (well actually, the anime was more intense and disturbing for what it covered, but that was only the first half of the story, and the events in the second half blow that completely out of the water).
I need to lie down. I meant to watch a few more eps of Abenobashi and finish off Jojo's Bizarre Adventure part 1 today but now I'm not in the mood.
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Post by jonathan on Jun 11, 2010 10:48:20 GMT
Can't really be bothered to write proper reviews or anything right now but I am finally rewatching Eva in preparation for getting caught up with the new movies. I am struck by how thoroughly entertaining and watchable it is, and how, in terms of form, it is very much just like any good old fun super-robot series, just with very gradual and deliberate character development and world-building . Of course, I am only currently at episode 14, but thus far I can only find the aspersions cast on it of being pretentious to be highly misguided. Also I'm noticing how much the style of cinematography has influenced some modern stuff ( Bakemonogatari in particular). Overall, it is quite interesting to revisit what was literally the first anime series I watched in its entireiety, 10+ years down the line and having seen alot more in the interim. Also Shinji really isn't as whiney as he gets stereotyped to be. I know shit gets real later but he only spent the first four episodes being a wuss so far, compared to 10 of being decent to badass. I also picked up the first volume of Future Diary. It is like Death Note only instead of notebooks it has cellphones and instead of pretty boys it has a CRAZY (but adorable) yandere stalker girlfriend. And everything works backwards. It seems very good. I will be acquiring more.
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Post by stokerino on Jun 11, 2010 12:14:35 GMT
That girl strikes me as a combination of Dokuro-chan... ...and that girl from Higurashi. ¬_¬
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Post by Emily on Jun 11, 2010 17:16:16 GMT
eva= stands the test of time.
what is it with cute little school girls and giant weapons. I am so bored with that now...
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Post by jonathan on Jun 12, 2010 13:53:28 GMT
Even without having seen either of Dokuro or Higurashi, I can safely say that Yuno is nothing like either of Dokuro or Rena. Rena isn't even the same character type (yangire as opposed to yandere).
Characters do generally consist of more than can be summated by one single image. If you're going to look at things that way then literally every character ever is just a cliché. Never mind the fact that the whole setup is totally different, given that a series does consist of more than just one character.
In other news, I watched Dragonball Evolution with some friends. It was just as terrible as I was hoping! However, we made the mistake of turning it into a drinking game where we drank every time we felt our childhood offended. I ended up probably vomiting out the lining of my stomach and still feel totally rotten. Never again.
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Post by Emily on Jun 13, 2010 18:49:04 GMT
so you can't sum them up with an image but you CAN with a word?
...i'm just sayin'...
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Post by jonathan on Jun 13, 2010 19:55:12 GMT
Well, no, you can't, because there's more to Yuno than "yandere", and probably more to Rena than "yangire". I'm saying that they're so obviously different that even the most over-simplified of one-word classifications fails to make them seem identical.
Basically you both seemed like you were try to write off something potentially good and enjoyable just because you wanted to judge it entirely based on one image of one character. If that's not what you were doing then apologies, but that's how it came across.
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Post by Emily on Jun 13, 2010 21:42:32 GMT
I like to make flippant remarks.
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Post by jonathan on Jun 14, 2010 0:25:24 GMT
And I like to respond to them. Just finished Eva and EoE. Heeeuearughasgh. It was portentious that I made that last post at episode 14, since I had forgotten that it is from just after that the tone starts to change and the budget starts to stretch. ^---- My face when End of Evangelion. I do love much of the second half but parts of it (and most of EoE) get into "I honestly don't know whether it's good or not but by this point it's too iconic and influential for quality judgements to even be relevant anyway" territory. Kind of like with 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or Pacman. Onto the new movies, hope they're good! I'm starting to use this thread as a kind of lite version of my own blog.
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Post by Emily on Jun 14, 2010 7:57:38 GMT
I could quite watch the whole thing again... think I gave all my dvds to Yash.
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Post by stokerino on Jun 14, 2010 8:32:46 GMT
If you did give them to Yash then she would no longer need them, since I own them all as well. :-p
Perhaps a group marathon viewing (with Yash, Stu etc.) is in order...
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Post by jonathan on Jun 14, 2010 15:27:51 GMT
Do eeeeeeeeeet. Make a game of it! Drink when: 1. Asuka's a bitch. 2. Shinji runs away. 3. Misato deals with something the wrong way. 4. Anything happens that doesn't make sense.
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Post by stokerino on Jun 14, 2010 15:52:58 GMT
I've watched it enough times to have significantly reduced the number of times 4) is applicable...until we got to the second half of EoE. Then everyone would just get wasted. :-p
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Post by Emily on Jun 14, 2010 17:41:34 GMT
CAN WE PLEASE DO THIS, YES? ;D ;D
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